A draft report by U.S. intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan
is in a "downward spiral" and casts serious doubt on the ability of the
Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban's influence there,
according to American officials familiar with the document.
The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in
Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the
government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence
from militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks
from havens in Pakistan.
The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence
Estimate, is set to be finished after the November elections and will
be the most comprehensive U.S. assessment in years on the situation in
Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on
decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Afghanistan the central focus of a
global campaign against terrorism.
Beyond the cross-border attacks launched by militants in
neighboring Pakistan, the intelligence report asserts that many of
Afghanistan's most vexing problems are of the country's own making, the
officials said.
The report cites gains in the building of Afghanistan's national
army, the officials said. But they said it also laid out in stark terms
what it described as the destabilizing impact of the booming heroin
trade, which by some estimates accounts for 50 percent of Afghanistan's
economy.
The Bush administration has initiated a major review of its
Afghanistan policy and has decided to send additional troops to the
country. The downward slide in the security situation in Afghanistan
has also become an issue in the presidential campaign, along with
questions about whether the White House emphasis in recent years on the
war in Iraq has been misplaced.
Inside the government, reports issued by the CIA for more than two
years have chronicled the worsening violence and rampant corruption
inside Afghanistan, and some in the agency say they believe that it has
taken the White House too long to respond to the warnings.
Henry A. Crumpton, a career CIA officer who last year stepped down
as the State Department's top counterterrorism official, attributed
some of Afghanistan's problems to a "lack of leadership" both at the
White House and in European capitals where commitments to rebuild
Afghanistan after 2001 have never been met.
Crumpton, who was in charge of the CIA teams that entered
Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks but who said he had not seen the
draft report, said that Afghanistan was "bad and getting worse" and
that officials in Washington were just beginning to wake up to the
problem.
"It's taken them a long time to realize it, but now they know it's pretty grim," he said.
An NIE is a formal document that reflects the consensus judgments
of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Although the Bush administration
has made public the crucial findings from some recent NIEs on Iraq and
terrorism, most remain classified. The draft NIE assessment on
Afghanistan is the first since the Taliban regained strength there
beginning in 2006 and launched an offensive that has allowed them to
seize large swaths of territory.
The draft intelligence report was described by more than a half
dozen current government officials who have read its conclusions. They
spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report remains
classified and has not yet been completed.
Richard Willing, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, which produces the national intelligence
assessments, declined to comment for this article.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe also declined to comment on
the report's conclusions but said: "Everyone understands that the
current situation in Afghanistan is a tough one. That's why the
president ordered additional troops there. That's why we're increasing
the size of the Afghanistan Army."
Both major presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John
McCain, have called for U.S. troop increases in Afghanistan even beyond
those the White House has ordered. Obama has accused the White House of
paying too little attention to Afghanistan as it poured the vast bulk
of American resources into the war in Iraq, while McCain has defended
the administration's decision, saying that Iraq remains the more
important front in the battle against terrorism.
In Tuesday's presidential debate, Obama said he told Karzai during
a visit to Afghanistan in July that the Afghan leader had "to do better
by your people in order for us to gain the popular support that's
necessary."
"We have to have a government that is responsive to the Afghan
people," Obama said, "and frankly it's just not responsive right now."
American officials said that intelligence agencies were also
working to produce an assessment on Pakistan, and that both were to be
completed after next month's elections. They said the draft findings
had already begun to influence the recommendations of the White
House-led review of Afghanistan policy, which was scheduled to be
completed this month but has now been postponed several weeks.
The administration is considering whether the United States should
devote more effort to working directly with tribal leaders in far-flung
provinces, and possibly arming tribal militias, to fight the Taliban in
places where Afghanistan's army and police forces have been ineffective.
The Bush administration had long resisted making tribal elders a
centerpiece of American strategy in Afghanistan. American officials had
hoped instead that strong national institutions like the Afghan Army
could protect the Afghan population, but the escalating violence this
year has forced a reassessment of the value of the tribal system for
counterinsurgency operations.
"In order to have an effective counterinsurgency strategy, you need
to have strong local governance in the districts and the provinces,"
said a senior State Department official who has been briefed on the
report's broad conclusions, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In a sign of the seriousness of the administration's policy review,
the White House's top coordinator for Afghanistan policy, Lt. Gen.
Douglas Lute of the Army, will lead a delegation of specialists who
will travel there to assess the current situation, a senior
administration official said Wednesday.
Administration officials say the review is examining how and where
the nearly $6 billion in annual American assistance to Afghanistan is
being spent; how to improve the effectiveness of small teams of
American and European civilians and troops seeded throughout the Afghan
provinces to spur economic growth; and how to strike the right balance
between taking military action against the Taliban and al Qaeda in
Pakistan and providing more development aid to that country.
Senior U.S. commanders have recently been blunt in their assessment of the security trends in the country.
"In large parts of Afghanistan, we don't see progress," Gen. David
McKiernan, the top American officer in Afghanistan, told reporters last
week. "We're into a very tough counterinsurgency fight and will be for
some time."
It is not just American officials who offer a grim prognosis. A
French diplomatic cable leaked to a French newspaper last week quoted
the British ambassador to Afghanistan as forecasting that the NATO-led
mission there would fail.
"The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting
worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust," the
British envoy, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted as telling the French
deputy ambassador to Kabul, who wrote the cable.
British officials have said the comments attributed to Sherard were distorted and do not reflect official British policy.
Source : http://www.sfgate.com/
